The blog for the CILIP Cataloguing and Indexing Group – Your Voice in Metadata

RDA in the UK implementation survey

“Future-proofing” our catalogue – we see RDA as the way that cataloguing is going – don’t want to be left behind!”

“An honest response here is that change is effectively being forced on us by changes in the wider world of cataloguing…”

“Not much has changed”

Opinions may be divided, but 83% of respondents have decided to implement RDA, according to the latest survey conducted by CIG. The poll, conducted by Survey Monkey during November, elicited responses from 47 institutions, of whom 16 had already implemented RDA and a further 14 plan to do so within 18 months; a further 9 will implement RDA, but have not set a date. No institution has decided not to implement RDA, although 7 have yet to make a decision.

The main reason for deciding to implement was to maintain interoperability with other agencies. Very few respondents thought there would be productivity benefits or other cost benefits in the short term. Several had concerns about the cost of subscriptions. In the longer term, there are expectations of enhanced discovery.

The response came overwhelmingly from academic libraries (over 75%), with less than 9% from public libraries. Respondents answered 10 questions covering implementation plans, experience of application, expectations, systems architecture, and scope of RDA. The full results and comments will be published in Catalogue & Index issue 173.